This past weekend Mother Nature continued to bless us with a moderate “refresher” snowfall. After lapping it up in the Jay inbounds, Kelly and I decided to mosey over to Little Jay in search of some untracked. With the internet yielding a surprising lack of trip reports concerning our objective, we really were just winging it. From asking around, we determined that we should park at the Big Jay parking lot, cross the street and follow a pretty obvious skin track up the mountain. Armed with this scant intel, we set off in search of pow.
The skin track was well traveled and easy going the entire way up. It brought us within about 50 vertical feet of the summit before dense foliage and steep, deep powder halted us. We took in the view for a bit before descending.
After a good look at the map and our surroundings, we realized that the only real way to screw up is to head too far toward skiers right, or W-SW off of the summit. Such a course would dump you in the wrong drainage, a bit of a hike from the parking area and through who knows what sort of bushwhack.
We decided to trend a bit toward skiers right for a short distance and then push back toward the left of East, toward the two streams which would certainly deliver us back to the parking area. In general I think this was the right idea, but we ended up too far into the stream bed which peters out into a bit of a mellow bushwhack. In hindsight the best skiing would probably have been to skier’s right or West of the the stream bed. The slopes in this region were tracked but plenty soft and getting free refills throughout the weekend.
Kelly, gettin’ deep!
